Gary Sanchez turns heads with monstrous home run to centerfield

TAMPA, Fla. — An opposing team talent evaluator put it perfectly Monday when it comes to Gary Sanchez and all of the talk about his defense.

Said the longtime scout: "Amazing how 400+ [foot] bombs makes him a better receiver."

Indeed.

Sanchez’s uneven defense and terrible performance at the plate caused him to essentially lose his starting job late in the 2020 season, but on Monday afternoon, he brought to mind an old Reggie Jackson line: "If you have a bat in your hands, you can change the story."

And the story in the Yankees’ 5-4 victory over the Tigers was Sanchez’s titanic third-inning home run off lefthander Gregory Soto that easily cleared the 40-foot-high batter’s eye in centerfield at Steinbrenner Field.

Longtime observers of spring training games in this ballpark struggled to recall another player doing so in a game. It happens occasionally in batting practice, but not often.

It overshadowed everything else about the game, including Gerrit Cole’s rough 28-pitch first inning — the ace’s only inning — with Sanchez behind the plate.

"Just looking for a pitch to hit there," said Sanchez, who cleared the 40-foot-high scoreboard in left with a homer off the Tigers’ Daniel Norris on Feb. 28, 2018, that was almost as rare a sight as Monday’s blast. "I wanted something in the zone that I could put a good swing on and I did. It felt good to connect and run around the bases."

Sanchez did not have many of those moments in 2020, when he had a .147/.253/.365 slash line,10 homers and 24 RBIs in 49 games. In addition, Kyle Higashioka caught Cole’s last four starts of the regular season and caught five of the Yankees’ seven postseason games, including the three started by Cole.

But when pitchers and catchers reported two weeks ago, Aaron Boone said he didn’t plan on pairing the two exclusively. That was a continuing sign of the club’s belief in Sanchez, who impressed the organization in the offseason with the tweaks he made in his game at the plate — which primarily involves getting better balance in his lower half — and behind it.

Sanchez made a couple of nice blocks on balls in the dirt in Cole’s inning, one in which the righthander allowed one run, three hits and a walk. He said he’s getting increasingly comfortable with the one-knee-down stance taught to him in spring training last year by catching coach Tanner Swanson.

"I’ve definitely felt better catching with my right knee down," Sanchez said through his interpreter. "I even got to Tampa early this year and I did some really good work with Tanner. We also incorporated the left knee down as well. I just definitely feel more comfortable. I think it’s allowing me not only to block better but also to receive better."

Cole, who has never criticized Sanchez publicly, said Monday: "I thought we worked well today. I was confident throwing anything we needed to."

But it was Jameson Taillon — who followed Cole to the mound and threw a perfect inning to Sanchez — who was most complimentary of Sanchez the catcher and Sanchez the hitter.

"He made a really good impression on me because my first few bullpens, he wasn’t lined up to catch me, but he was sitting right behind the catcher, watching every pitch, locked in," Taillon said. "And he made some comments to me after my bullpens and stuff about what he saw. For me, that was a great first impression, and he’s making a really strong effort to get to know me and work with me."

As for Sanchez at the plate, Taillon recalled facing Sanchez when both were in low Class A ball in 2011 — Sanchez with Charleston and Taillon with West Virginia.

"That was one of the first things I said to him," Taillon said with a smile. "He hit a homer off of me in Low-A, and I have a pretty short-term memory, and I remember that home run. He hit it and I ducked because I thought it was going to hit me in the head and then it hit the actual centerfield batter’s eye. So he’s got crazy power . . . I knew Gary was going to be something back then."